


Back to the Begining of the End of the Beginning

by Draco10



Category: Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6853876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco10/pseuds/Draco10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back to the ice court<br/>Back to dirty hands and the wraith<br/>Back to an impossible heist<br/>Back to saving lives<br/>Back to the beginning of the end of the beginning</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Inej. He had Inej. Jan Van Eck's life had been completely and totally ruined. He had deserved it, he had taken Inej. Now Kaz had Inej. But he didn't have her, in six weeks time they would reach Ketterdam. She would find a crew, chase her dream and what would he do, what did he want to do. 

All he wanted was her but he couldn't make himself say "I will be anything you want me to be" he wanted to so bad. He wanted her more than anything he had. But he was still a dark twisted creature. How could he not be? Everytime he showed weakness the world punished him for it. 

He thumped down the steps to below decks and paused, the door to the crews sleeping area whas open. Kaz had designed that lock himself. Nobody could pick it. The rest of the crew was above deck getting the boat ready to depart, celebrating and trading stories, Kaz had just come down to get the alcohol. Kaz knew they had locked the door before coming up, it was one of the most important rules: never leave the door unlocked. Kaz only knew one person who was good enough to pick a lock that Kaz had designed.

"X"

Kaz shouted as he walked into the room. 

Low and behold there the boy sat. Kaz grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up not noticing his feet were chained to a support beam...okay he did notice, but X deserved to be yanked.

"I fabricated them, I will only free myself if you agree to help me." The kid said, obviously trying to look tough. How did he survive the barrel at seven, Kaz wondered. 

Kas thought of just leaving X to starve, than of cutting off his feet, before he realized there was a much simpler way to deal with his problem. He grabbed X and shook him hard just out of spite, before explaining to him,

"Jesper is a fabricator, if I have to get him down here to undo those, you will never see the light of tomorrow."

X undid the chains. No sooner did he do than he did than Kaz was pulling him the ships stairs. Inej shouted his name and asked who X was while Mathias and Wylan just stared. Kaz didn't see just Nina or Jesper but he was willing too bet that Jesper had managed to get himself hurt and Nina was healing him.  
Kaz limped to the side of the ship and threw X over while flipping his cane into his other hand, turning it into a bar. X grabbed it after scratching Kaz's arm. Kaz winced but kept hold of his cane, shaking it violently,

"Please, Kaz I'm sorry, I really need your help" Kaz stopped the shaking 

"Go on"

"my friends- troops - crew- can you let me up from here"

"No" Caz growled

"So we were going to - we were in the process of - my arms hurt, I'm gonna drop, than die"

"Trust me, by the time you can't hold on any longer, I will have already dropped you, so summarize for once in your life. I have spent way too much time on you for you to drown" 

"My crew got thrown into grisha cells in a slave boat when we were trying to break into the ice court and I have to get them out, you'll get arms and money, please help" Kaz pulled him up grudgingly.

He hugged Kaz before he could be stopped,

"Kaz, I missed you, less after you threw me in the ocean" he whispered. Once again Kaz wondered how he had survived the barrel. Kaz knew how his body had survived, the boy was smart and quick and made all the right friends. But even Inej had come out hardened, her moral code broken, how was he the same little idiot who had wandered into Ketterdam all those years ago.

Kaz could feel the others staring. nobody hugged Kaz. Ever. Except X. The kid wasn't scared of death until he was an inch away.

Kaz peeled X off him, the kid was grinning, people weren't supposed to be that happy to see the bastard of the barrel.

"what did I say about hugging" Kaz growled

"Don't" X said in a bright tone, "why do you growl everything?"

Jesper emerged from below deck

"X came..." His words were effectively cut off by X's giant hug, "to visit" he finished, grinning and returning the hug.

His smile dropped from his face and he pushed X an arms length away then put his hand on the boys forehead, "Kaz you should take a look at this, he's feeling really hot" 

Something in his voice made Kaz's heart go cold, he remembered Jordy's voice 8 years ago "I'm just feeling really hot, probably just got a little fever"

Kaz ran over, forgetting to be mad at X, "I'll one up that" he growled pulling off a glove and checking X's forehead himself. Jesper's eyes opened wide and his jaw went slack, Kaz was sure the others were just as surprised, but that wasn't important, what was important was that X's temperature was way to high. 

"Get Nina" Kaz shouted. Trying to calm down but the command couldn't breach the waves of panic he was feeling.

X's eyes opened as if in realization,  
"I Kissed a Girl" he said

"What" Kaz asked, trying to connect X's random statement to useful information maybe it wasn't part of useful information. Maybe that was just the last thing ex wanted the world to know about him before he died. The part of Kaz that didn't understand the situation was thinking, X kissed a girl, what girl, he's not even supposed to like girls. X finally explained, 

"I kissed a girl who was dying, I think, I think she might have been dying of a disease, I couldn't tell everybody looked nasty and dirty on the slave boat"

"You did what" Kaz was mad now, and X could tell, he was going from nervous to scared, good, he should be scared. "alot of kruge better have been involved"

"It was part of her people's death ritual, they were going to throw in the sea. I wanted to comfort her, make at least one thing right. I was just trying to do the right thing"  
X shivered under Kaz's cold gaze.

"You were trying to do the right thing." Kaz let the words hang in the air for a few seconds, out of the corner of his eye he saw Inej shift, he knew she wanted to stop him. But she didn't, to scared of him maybe, but he doubted it.

"Think vary hard, did she have any thing that could have been caused by disease"

"She felt hot and had welts but so did a lot of people, everyone looked horrible."

Nina had been listening from the stairwell,

"A fire pox epidemic broke out on the sea border of ravka" she said

"Go downstairs" Kaz told X

"Am I going to die" he whispered 

"No, but your stupid decision is going to cost me a lot of money and that makes me very, very unhappy. So if I were you I would do whatever I say to make me less unhappy. So go downstairs, now" Kaz answered, pushing him. X ran down stairs. 

Finally Inej approached him,

"Kaz..."

"Who was that kid"

Mathias exclaimed, cutting off whatever statement about morality Inej was about to pronounce.

"X, my prodigy"

Kaz said in a exasperated tone, he wondered if they could tell his heart was beating to fast.

"X?"

Mathias asked

"I named him"

Kaz explained proudly,

"You named him"

Mathias sputtered

"Let me guess"

Kaz said, preparing for a statement about holiness.

"Names are sacred, you can't just name a child"  
Mathias explained, aghast.

"And yet I did" Kaz said, rolling his eyes.

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

Inej approached Kaz carefully. After explaining X's name he had walked to the front of the ship to brood. Jesper was with Nina under decks, and she knew better than to barge in when Nina was with a patient. The rest of the group knew nothing about X so the only way to figure out who x was by asking Kaz. They hadn't spoke much since he had rescued her, again. Her mind was made up but she wanted him, the boy who rescued her.

"Who is he" she asked "where are his parents"

Kaz leaned hard on the rail 

"He's a lot of things, and his parents..." she could see him thinking about a memory "he doesn't have parents"

"Did you kill them"

"No, of course not, he has parents but they don't deserve to be parents, he ran away when he was five." 

He looked like he wanted to say something more but kept it down. So guarded. She remembered that look on his face when he said "I'll one up that". Did he look like that when he saw her bleeding all those months ago stabbed and dying on a shipping crate. 

"A runaway, like Wylan, I would rather be taken from good parents than have to run away from bad ones any day"

He stared into the ocean, thinking, calculating, finally he spoke 

"you wanted me unguarded. If that boy dies, my emotions will be locked in a vault under 20 miles of Earth, under an ocean"

She touched him on the shoulder, he tensed, but then relaxed. Less guarded than he had been a month ago, the last time she had seen him. Much less guarded than he had been before the whole crazy heist had started. Less guarded than he had been 30 minutes ago, even.

Inej didn't know what to say to keep him open and talking. She settled for the first thing she thought of.

"Why do you love him so much"

"He's smart and good with cards and locks"

"Why do you love him" she wanted him to answer, to at least try to explain why. But she didn't expect him to.

Kaz gazed into the water and shrugged,

"I don't know, he's unbeatable, his parents, the barrel, me, we tried to change him, you can't change perfection..." 

It was an old zulee proverb 'you can't change perfection, you can only destroy it' 

"No old proverb ever said destroying it was easy, people fight for perfection"

He smiled a little,

"turning on your own proverb?"

"No I'm elaborating on it" she explained. He glanced at the stairs, "Go, just try not to be too harsh on him"

"He responds to harshness" 

"Yes, the only negative effect being a terrified child" 

"That's a negative effect?"

He sounded playful, but Inej could hear the edge to his voice. He was guarded again. She let him go without another question, then looked out into the true sea, the boy who saved her was worth saving. But was he? A brief moment of sincerity did not ensure that he was redeemable. Who's to say a conversation like this will ever happen again. And she was sick of waiting for him, sick of loving a boy who couldn't reciprocate, who couldn't love her back.


	2. Chapter 2

Jesper followed X and watched Nina try to figure out if he had fire pox. They had been so close to the party he had imagined before the job had started. It didn't matter now all he could think of was X's burning skin under his hand. X wasn't supposed to get hurt, he was unstoppable, invincible. In Ketterdam he got away with everything. He stole from Caz and lived. Yet there he sat, closer to death than he had ever been, felled by an invisible attacker. He couldn't make sense of it.

X was reading out of a big medicine book. 

"Wow, did anyone survive this?" He asked 

"Yes, everyone rich enough to afford the cure, that bit should be in their somewhere"

Jesper sat next to X and peeked over his shoulder. X glanced up but then refocused on the book. his face twisted up in concentration. 

"Can you read it out loud?" Jesper asked

"You want to give me a reading lesson right before I die" 

X had been seven when Caz took him to the crow club for the very first time. Caz wanted him to steal the wallet of a new person, write down any ID and return it ,but X couldn't read so Jesper was given the impossible task of teaching him to read. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. He remembered Caz walking in an hour later and asking if X knew how to read yet. Jesper was still terrified of Caz having only met him that year, but replied "you skipped the first ten years of your life, didn't you"

"You aren't going to die and you need practice how long have you spent on that paragraph"

"You were talking to me X protested, but he started reading.

"The fffffffirst [unintelligible] was .........in....eee-fffffffff-eee-k-tive" at this point Nina opened her mouth to correct his pronunciation but Jesper cut her off and shook his head,

"Nice job figuring that word out, keep going"

X started pacing as he puzzled through the next sentence- "but the sssssec-o-nnnd ca-re created by the- I don't like that word- worked much better" Jesper was saved from any more self created torture by Caz thumping down the steps. 

"Does he.." Nina nodded. Caz turned to Jesper "are you giving him a reading lesson"

"You know what, it's a good time to stop"

Jesper said, escaping up the stairs. He decided to find Wylan, annoying the merchling might take his mind off X. For the last month and a half he had accepted that some of their six was going to die probably all of them. Nina practically did. But somehow X dieing seemed like to much to handle. Jesper found Wylan leaning on the rail, port side. 

"How contagious is this fire pox thing" Wylan asked 

"Vary, we probably all have it and it entails a certain death" Jesper replied trying to sound dead serious.

"Jesper you better not be joking around"

Nina appeared beside them, 

"fire pox is only contagious before it's visible, he is just past the contagious period, you have nothing to fear." She assured Wylan before turning to Jesper "now about his reading abilities..."

"Ok, I'm not going to say you shouldn't teach him to read but he really just needs practice and you might-" Jesper's words were cut off by Nina's retort,

"Might what, he doesn't just need practice, he needs to learn how to read effectively, preferably by someone who's been taught by the best teachers in Ravka"

"Taught a different language" 

"I'm fluent in Kerch and can use the techniques my teachers used teaching me either tongue" Nina argued.

"But the thing is, you can be a little forceful when you want someone to do something" Jesper explained.

"I'm not forceful, maybe perseverant but-" 

"Your a bit aggressive, and with your perseverance you can come off as vary forceful. And a little scary" Wylan put in quietly. Jesper grinned 

"I will teach him to read well and make him like it." Nina declared,

"That sounds forceful" Jesper said 

"I'm not being forceful" Nina shouted in a huff, walking off.


	3. Chapter 3

All six of the original crew gathered in Kaz's office. Nina had put X's safety over her education plan and put him in a coma to stop the worsening of his condition.

"What is X's condition exactly?" Kaz's asked

"I put him in a drug induced coma that can last two weeks before it causes brain damage, we need that vaccine, but guess where it is" Nina answered 

"The ice court"

She nodded "and guess where his guys are now"

"The ice court"

She nodded

"Get breakfast, everyone, than we'll see what the plan is."

Everyone evacuated but Inej lingered, "I'm gonna save those kids Caz, this is what I wanted, to use my skills to free people," she said "my first job" she whispered.

"No" Caz said, surprising himself, he had everything he wanted, money, control of the barrel, was he about to risk everything when inej could clearly handle this? "Yes, X is my guy, we will do this as a team but you can take the lead-ish"

"Lead-ish?"

"I might have to interject my genius, of course"

"Of course" she said smiling and leaving his room.

Yes, he would risk, even abandon, everything he wanted for everyone he wanted. He would even go to the coldest hell in existence for them.


End file.
